Got a chance last week to make it to a special place... The New Yankee Stadium. It was a cool Friday night with slightly rainy weather, but nothing could stop me from making it into the new Stadium. A 7:05 first pitch against the Angels, so I had to get an early start from across the river in Jersey.  As we found ourselves parking at around 3:30 PM we knew we had some time to kill, but because we had a first timer in our group we had to grab a beer at Stan's Sports Bar (yes a block away from the new house, but tradition is tradition).

Growing up about 45 minutes from the stadium, I was raised a Yankee fan.  Many memories from the old stadium will never be recreated, but hopefully many new ones will come from our new home.  Funny, my mother saves everything and she still has my first Yankee jacket - won't fit my arm in it now, but I remember loving wearing that jacket!

Now it was time, finish your beer at Stan's, take a good look at the old stadium and head down the street towards the new house.  It was about 4:15 when we passed through the gates and my jaw just about hit the floor, this was later confirmed by the others I was with and it kind of made sense when the security people (wearing "How Can I Help You" rain jackets) asked if there was anything they could do to make my trip better, and then welcomed me to the New Yankee Stadium.

So many things are different in the new place, flat screen TVs, food and drink everywhere you turn, nice new features... yet part of it still feels like the old tradition any Yankee fan could try to find words to describe.  I knew we had to make our way over to the lower level walkway to take a look at the field - it was beautiful (yet still covered by the tarp due to the rain).  After we snapped a few pictures and had a few snapped of us - they have a new deal where photographers walk around the stadium and take your picture and then give you a card that you can later go online to purchase the picture, pricey as with anything else related to going to a sporting event, but a nice touch.

Now it was time to wait on line to see Monument Park, a great tradition.  After about a 10 minute wait we entered, it was beautiful - and a few pictures later and some explaining about who was who and what was what - a little respect to my favorite Yankee "Donnie Baseball" we were back in the hallways roaming around.

Our group then found our seats - certainly they were in the bleacher section, I had to have my first game at the new stadium with all the real fans, the bleacher creatures (Watch Video) and not the corporate uninterested group in the $2500 seats.  The view from the "cheap seats" is a good one - we had the last row in the section and had a nice raised walkway to rest our backs on for the game.  We raided the bathrooms for paper towels and toweled our seats dry - although they cancelled batting practice so they could keep the tarp on the field, it was nice to see some of the guys come out for some long toss.

The game was getting started and my excitement didn't fade for one instant, it was damn good to be home in the northeast and even better to be sharing a Yankee game with great friends/family. After the classic roll call in the top of the 1^st (Watch Video - yes that is the game we were at) the Yanks got out to a 4 run lead in the first - with the help of a Posada 2 run blast into the seats in front of us.  Angels answered back and scored 6 runs in the 6^th and then added 3 more on top of that in the 7^th.  The Yanks battled back in the bottom of the 9^th and Posada came through again with a walk off two run single - Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win! I sat for a few minutes after things calmed down and just enjoyed myself while Sinatra played in the background - what a great night this turned into!

To recap, the New Yankee Stadium is wonderful, it is everything a Yankee fan could want (aside from the outrageous prices), but the real fun in going to a game is to share some good times and hopefully witness something special that you could share in a memory with good friends and family for the rest of your lives.  A little bottom of the 9^th magic made my first trip to the New Stadium one to remember!  Hopefully this blog post will have you going out and checking out the new ballpark, but if you are not a Yankee fan, get together with a few close friends and/or family and get out to a ballgame - it's a wonderful experience and a great time.  Now, I can only hope the suits in the Yankee organization are listening (and at the other parks too), there are not many real fans that are going to be able to afford to go see a game if the ticket prices don't start to change - they dropped them at Yankee stadium 50% this past week, but in my opinion even at $1250 a seat for some of the seats, they are still a good ways off the mark.  No one wants to see an empty stadium and on TV when the camera pans away from the hitter into a sea of empty blue seats, what does that say about America's pastime - wake up!